,
8 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
The private-state nature of corrupt criminal dictatorships like Putin's Russia confounds law enforcement the way hybrid war confounds traditional military response.
Putin uses his oligarchs as emissaries to corrupt, cultivate, and compromise foreign business people and politicians. But they aren't officially state actors. It's a mafia using a nation for cover.
So Trump's campaign manager sharing data with a Ukrainian loyal to the Kremlin or a billionaire crony of Putin isn't "conspiring with Russia" only in the most technical, least accurate sense.
This pattern has repeated all over. Loans to Western politicians & parties with Russian backing, millions in donations from private citizens. Technically very little of it is "Russia," but it's always Putin.
Defending will require transparency, unity, and a commitment to strengthening the institutions Putin exploits so easily. It will also require fighting back on terms a mafia responds to.
As with Trump's power grabs post-election, there is a lot of work to do so that the letter of the law matches the spirit of the law. If winning an election after asking for and receiving the aid of a hostile foreign power isn't illegal, it sure as hell should be.
Campaign finance reform, full financial disclosure, eliminating potential conflicts of interest. Running for office or running a country for personal gain must be proscribed if real democracy is to survive.
Putin and his imitators are good at finding the gray areas of public/private, legal/illegal, media/propaganda, and they exploit every gap. Legal systems & news orgs in the free world are bound by strict rules & traditions of fair play.
